Thomas H Green runs through the defining years of the world's greatest
music festival

Glastonbury Festival began as a dairy farmer’s tentative foray into hippy culture but has since grown into a national institution and the most famous outdoor music event in the world. As Noel Gallagher once said, “It’s the only real festival, the best. The rest of them are just rock bands playing in fields.” This year will be the 33rd since the festival began 45 years ago. Every single one has had its moments but some years have been pivotal in shaping the growth of Glastonbury.

1970

It was fortuitous for generations of hedonists that, at the end of June 1970, a 34-year-old dairy farmer, who secretly harboured aspirations to pop stardom, sneaked into the rain-sodden Bath Festival of Blues and Progressive Music at Shepton Mallet Showground. Inspired by what he saw, especially Led Zeppelin, Michael Eavis put on his own event at Worthy Farm, in the Somerset village of Pilton, for a quid a head (including free milk) that same September. 2000 locals and hippies mingled, watching bands such as T Rex. An idea was born.

1971

Hippies at Glastonbury Festival in 1971 celebrate the summer solstice with music and dancing. (Image: Ian Tyas/Keystone Features/Getty Images)

Shortly after the first Glastonbury, Michael Eavis received a visit from 37-year-old hippy dreamer Andrew Kerr. With financial backing from Winston Churchill’s 21-year-old granddaughter Arabella, they put together an event they called the Glastonbury Fayre. A chance meeting on the nearby Tor with set designer Bill Harkin resulted in the Pyramid Stage, which came to the Liverpudlian a dream. David Bowie played, Nic Roeg filmed proceedings, and the festival took root.

1979

From 1971 there were informal gatherings on Eavis’s land, but in 1979, Arabella Churchill wanted to stage an event in honour of the UN Year of the Child. Eavis took out a loan against his farm and the festival was attended by 12,000 at £5 a head. The children’s and theatre fields were created and, alongside the usual hippies, punk made its presence felt with sets by The Pop Group and the Only Ones. The festival’s infrastructure was starting to appear.

1981

If 1979 was an experiment then 1981 consolidated the festival as a large scale, organised event. The Pyramid Stage was sturdily rebuilt with telegraph poles and featured bands ranging from Taj Mahal to New Order, doubling up in winter as a Worthy Farm’s feed store. A decade-long association with CND began with a chunk of the profits going to the organisation and defining the festival as a politically-minded gathering.

1986

Following a mud bath the previous year, 1986 presaged what Glastonbury could become. The Cure’s set, featuring layers amid a torrential thunderstorm, was a landmark of scale and impact. 60,000 tickets holders attended the weekend, as well as a new contingent of so-called “new age travellers”. They were increasingly unwelcome across Britain but Eavis, encouraged by the police, gave their convoy a temporary home, creating an edgy, creative contingent, the remnants of which survive in the festival’s wild far flung fields to this day.

1990

1990 was a vintage Glastonbury, featuring notable sets by Happy Mondays and Sinead O’Connor, and a wild, chainsaw-wielding performance by Circus Archaos. However, in festival lore it will be remembered for what happened as it closed. The traveller presence had grown and a misunderstanding between a small group of them and security blew-up into a full scale mob brawl, involving the riot police. Along with regular tussles with the local council over licensing issues, it seemed Michael Eavis’s jig was up.

1995

After a year off in 1991, Glastonbury returned with Greenpeace as its partner and rave culture began to make its mark. The festival had previously allowed illicit sound systems to set up and even explored an anarchic techno Experimental Sound Field. However, it was only with the arrival of 1995’s Dance Tent that rave found an officially sanctioned home. Pulp and Oasis flew the Britpop flag on the Pyramid.

1997

There have been many muddy Glastonburys but 1997 was, arguably, the most extreme. The rain had been relentless prior to the festival and the results were devastating. Bands were cancelled as stages became waterlogged, the markets sank in mud, tour buses were immobilised, and the dance tent became a mire. Eavis and his team rose to the occasion, proving they could handle such a crisis. Channel 4 had covered Glastonbury from 1994 but the BBC now took over. Their prime time coverage changed the festival forever.

2000

2000 was the last chance for a free-for-all Glastonbury, as thousands gatecrashed the site, jumping the fence and even knocking it down in parts. The Vale of Avalon, jammed with a record 250,000 people, looked like Bartertown from Mad Max III. In front of this madness, David Bowie and others performed storming sets, but behind the scenes there was a realisation that things were out of control, even by Glastonbury’s standards. Something had to be done.

2002

With the arrival of a new double super-fence, watchtowers and military-style patrols, for the first time ever Glastonbury became impenetrable to those without tickets. The festival’s management was taken over by Festival Republic, who had a reputation for profit-driven functionality rather than carefree creativity. And yet the Glastonbury spirit survived. The free wheeling Lost Vagueness fields were created alongside free tickets for tens of thousands of roaming performers, yurt experts, new age healers, and others whose role is nebulous yet essential to 'the vibe’.

2005

Pete Doherty and Kate Moss at the festival in 2005 (Anthony Devlin/REX Shutterstock)

At 4.00am on Friday 24th June, following a week-long heatwave, Glastonbury was hit with an almighty thunderstorm that threw down a couple of months’ rain in two hours. The flooding was spectacular and several stages were closed but the festival, which had notably expanded to encompass a whole Dance Village, bore up, entertained by the White Stripes and Basement Jaxx standing in for Kyle Minogue. It was also notable for Kate Moss’s appearance in wellies alongside then-boyfriend Pete Doherty, accidentally launching a tradition of celebs posing about Worthy Farm.

2007

Emily Eavis is Michael’s youngest daughter, his only child with second wife Jean, born in 1979, 14 years after her nearest sibling. Always closer to the festival’s organisation than her elder kin, she created the Park stage at the rain-swept 2007 festival, her first big step towards more extensive involvement. While The Who and Arctic Monkeys entertained the Pyramid audience, up at the Park, Spiritualised, Kate Nash, Chas’n’Dave and more showed Emily was a rising young star in the Glastonbury firmament.

2008

The festival hit choppy waters as tickets failed to sell out and there was some outrage as Jay Z was announced at the first rapper to perform in the big Saturday night slot. Noel Gallagher fanned the flames around the decision by stating, “I’m not having hip-hop at Glastonbury. It’s wrong,” and intimated this was the reason the ticket sales were down. The latter was actually more likely due to a national recession beginning and Jay-Z proved to be a triumph. Opprobrium at Glastonbury headliners has since become a regular tradition, surrounding Beyonce in 2011, Metallica in 2014 and Kanye West this year.

2010

The hottest Glastonbury ever, with the sun beating down from a cloudless sky, creating temperatures of 28C degrees throughout. Thousands of cases of heatstroke were reported but, fortunately the festival had installed a second million litre water reservoir to support the 800 taps around the site. In the festival’s 40th year, expansion continued apace, including, in a sad footnote, the erection of a stone bridge in honour of Glastonbury royalty, Arabella Churchill, who died in December 2007.

2013

Mick Jagger and The Rolling Stones on the main Pyramid Stage in 2013 (Image: Julian Simmonds)

Three bands have long held out from playing Glastonbury – Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd and the Rolling Stones. Zep’s key players have appeared separately over the years, Pink Floyd have never happened, but in 2013, after decades of negotiating, Eavis finally persuade the Stones to play. Alongside 2004’s Paul McCartney set, with its extraordinary site-wide singing of 'Hey Jude’, the epochal Saturday night performance by Jagger, Richards, et al, was arguably the Festival’s biggest, most iconic headliner.

2015

Festival founder Andrew Kerr died last autumn and Michael Eavis is now 80, but Somerset’s second biggest city (for three days), like the dairy farmer who started it, shows little sign of slowing down. There have been the usual dramas, with Foo Fighters forced to pull out, due to injury, and Florence & the Machine stepping up to headline, but, as ever, it will not be what the TV shows that makes the festival, but the random wonders to be found in every corner of its thousand acres of ingenious lunacy.